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Defensive Stats

Uzr has a ton of flaws but it can certainly be useful if youre objective about it and understand its strengths.

Looking at Beckham's UZR...

He has three seasons of data, which is a rather small sample size:

2010 - -0.8
2011 - 4.9
2012 - - 0.7

The negative UZR does not indicate that he's a bad fielder. We only have a sample size of three seasons, and actually, these stats indicate that he's a good fielder. It's important to understand that defensive stats can fluctuate just like offensive seasons and pitching. You will have years where a player is better than normal and season where a player is worse than normal.

When you look at just this season and see a -0.7 UZR, you need to see what other data is available. A -0.7 UZR is hardly that bad, and doesn't indicate anything.

To me, these numbers tell you that Beckham is a solid to good fielder, but how good has yet to be determined. Give it another year or two.

I don't like UZR, the results are like a sine wave. Three years is a gigantic window to have to wait on accumulating, and what happens when a player goes into decline in the 2nd year? How will you ever be able to parse the decline out with assurance?

Also UZR sucks for 1B and C.

Chuckle all you like, I find the baseball-reference TZR, range, and Rfield stats to be far less erratic - thus more usable in a current year - if somewhat less exacting than UZR.

6/27/09: “We expect [Rondo] to play by the rules and be a leader as a point guard. We need him to be more of a leader,” Ainge said. “There were just a couple situations where he was late this year, I don’t know if he was sitting in his car, but showed up late and the rest of the team was there. We have team rules and you have to be on time. He was fined for being late, he said he was stuck in traffic, and it’s just unacceptable.”